Old Man's War
|series = 1}} }} Old Man's War is the first book in the Old Man's War series. Blurb John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First, he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce-- and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity's resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don't want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets. John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine--and what he will become is far stranger. Plot John Perry, a 75-year-old retired advertising writer, joins the Colonial Defense Forces who protect human interplanetary colonists. Volunteers sign letters of intent and provide DNA samples at age 65, which John and his now-deceased wife Kathy had done ten years prior to the beginning of the story. After visiting his wife's grave to say goodbye (as volunteers can never return to Earth), Perry takes a space elevator to the CDF ship Henry Hudson, where he meets a fellow male and female retiree volunteers who dub themselves the "Old Farts". Following a series of sometimes bizarre psychological and physical tests, Perry's mind is ultimately transferred to a new body based on his genetic material. His new body is a younger version of himself, but genetically engineered with enhanced musculature, green skin, and yellow cat-like eyes. He now possesses enormous strength and dexterity, nanobot-enhanced artificial blood, enhanced eyesight and other senses, and most critically, a BrainPal—a neural interface that, among other capabilities, allows Perry to communicate with other members of the CDF via thought. After a week of frivolity and orgies in their new bodies, Perry and the other recruits land on Beta Pyxis III for basic training, during which the CDF's heritage in the United States armed forces is made clear when the recruits are taught the Rifleman's Creed. After Perry learns that his drill instructor adopted one of his advertising slogans as a personal mantra, Perry is given the dubious job of platoon leader during the weeks of training before he is shipped out to the CDF ship Modesto. His first engagement is with the Consu, a fierce and incredibly intelligent, though religiously zealous, alien species. Perry improvises a tactic which enables the CDF to win this first battle quickly. This is soon followed by a number of battles with, among others, the bear-like Whaidians and the tiny Covandu. By the end of this last engagement, Perry begins to suffer psychological distress over killing the Liliputian Covandu and accepts that he has transformed both physically and mentally. Now a veteran, Perry participates in the Battle for Coral. The planet contains coral reefs valuable to the attacking Rraey, as well as a human colony (the Rraey also have a taste for human flesh). The CDF plans to rapidly counterattack with a small force before the Rraey establish their coral strip mining operations, but the Rraey have somehow obtained technology to predict the appearance of a space ship's skip drive (a feat that should not be possible) and use this knowledge to ambush and destroy CDF ships as they arrive in the Coral system. Perry's quick thinking allows him and his fellow soldiers on a transport shuttle to escape the wreckage of the Modesto and make for the planet's surface, but they are shot down and Perry is the only survivor of the crash. Perry is left for dead by a Rraey search party (who find CDF soldiers inedible), but he is rescued by members of the mysterious "Ghost Brigades", the Special Forces units of the CDF. Perry thinks he has died when he sees Jane Sagan, the leader of the Ghost Brigades rescue team, who appears to be a younger green version of his dead wife Kathy. After being repaired, Perry tracks down Sagan, who turns out to have been grown based on Kathy Perry's DNA sample, as legally allowed by her letter of intent to join the CDF. Unlike John, Jane has no memories of Kathy's life, as she is only six years old, but after learning about Kathy, Jane seeks to learn more from John about being a "realborn" person and what kind of life one can have outside the CDF. Sagan manipulates her chain of command to promote John to an advisory role as lieutenant to gather information from the Consu during a ritualistic meeting to obtain information. Perry discovers that the Rraey had received the skip-drive detection tachyon technology from the Consu, which was used to set up the ambush at Coral. Perry also manipulates his chain of command to have the last two of his friends from the "Old Farts" transferred out of combat duty to military research. Sagan and Perry then participate in a Special Forces operation in an attempt to capture or destroy the borrowed Consu technology in advance of a major attack to recapture Coral from the Rraey. Perry is instrumental in the successful outcome of the battle by capturing the technical manual for the Consu detection system (which was destroyed in the fighting), and saving Sagan's life after she is severely wounded. However, he never sees her again after delivering her to a shuttle which returns her to the secretive Ghost Brigades. At the conclusion of the book, Perry is promoted to captain following his deeds at Coral and despite the separation, holds hope of reuniting with Sagan when their terms of service conclude. Characters John Perry Jane Sagan Races Consu Covandu Rraey Whaid Organizations Colonial Union * Colonial Defense Forces * Special Forces Planets Earth Beta Pyxis III Coral Phoenix Technology BrainPal Skip Drive MP-35 SmartBlood Translations Old Man's War has been translated into 23 languages from around the world since its English publication in 2005. * Russian: Обреченные на победу (2006) * Hebrew: מלחמת האדם הזקן * French: Le vieil homme et la guerre (2007) * German: Krieg der Klone (2007) * Japanese: 老人と宇宙 ''(2007) * Bulgarian: ''Войната на старците (2007) * Polish: Wojna starego człowieka (2008) * Brazilian Portuguese: A Guerra é Para os Velhos (2009) * Russian: Обреченные на победу (2009) * Korean: 노인의 전쟁 (2009) * Hungarian: Vének háborúja (2012) * Spanish: La vieja guardia (2012) * Italian: Morire per vivere (2012) * Chinese: 垂暮戰爭'' (2012)'' * Turkish: Yaşlı Adamın Savaşı (2012) * Estonian: Vanamehe sõda (2013) * Norwegian: De gamles krig (2013) * Romanian: Razboiul batranilor (2015) * Persian: جنگ پیرمرد * Portuguese: Guerra do velho ''(2016) * Thai: ''โอลด์ แมนส์ วอร์ ปฐมบทสงครามข้ามเอกภพ (2017) * Greek: Διαστρικός πόλεμος (2018) * Serbian: Starčev Rat (2018) Ships CDFS Henry Hudson CDFS Modesto CDFS Bakersfield CDFS Sparrowhawk CDFS Little Rock CDFS Muncie CDFS Mobile CDFS Waco CDFS Amarillo Category:Books